Defeated by puzzle - campaign over: Here is the offending puzzle!

[SuperGamera]

Could it be a game board of some sort? Like Go or something equivalent, with the symbols corresponding to white stones, black stones, and open spaces?

 

[Nifelhein]

This is not a puzzle, it does not give any clue to how one is to actually solve it, it is like a crosswords without the hints to each word, completely unworthy of my time. If the Dm hinted for the solution at the game during different times and made it sot hat you would get there and have a reasonable chance fo solving based on knowledge and not expectation, then it would be a puzzle.

I sure like puzzles, but unless you have a criptographer in your group please keep it far from criptex and mental challenges to the players, we play for fun, not because we want to break the next security code NASA is using.

 

[toberane]

Maybe he plans on using it again...?

That was my thought, and if this is true, I say run hard, run fast, run as far away as you can.

 

[Remathilis]

Psssst. The Matrix has you.

Pass it on.

 

[jmucchiello]

Maybe he plans on using it again...?

To what purpose? He already knows that his group can't solve it.

I don't understand why he wouldn't give the answer. Roman is saying it went down as follows:

Spend a whole session, can't solve it.
Spend 10 minutes next session, players say: We give up.
DM says: Okay, you're dead. Next campaign
Everybody starts making new characters.
Roman: So what was the answer?
DM: Er........

There is no excuse for not answering the question: What the f did we waste all our time on that beat us? To not immediately start drawing symbols onto the piece of paper AND explaining why they go there is extremely rude. This isn't a magician guarding he secrets. It's group of people in a friendly game. Once you give up, if he doesn't provide the solution, I have no reason to believe he has a solution.

My opinion of the DM somehow is lower now than when I read the first thread. Didn't think that was possible.

 

[Greylock]

I did ask for the solution after the campaign ended, but the DM was not forthcoming. He did, however, acquiesce to give me the puzzle to post on the net...

I've said this already, but I'll say it again...

That's plain mean.

Your game, your life and everything, but this would make me seriously question the fellow. Looks like a control freak at worst, and as an xxx at best, as has been pointed out so many times in this thread.

 

[Greylock]

Once you give up, if he doesn't provide the solution, I have no reason to believe he has a solution.

Good point. I think there might be a combination of things going on. Thinking back to the example of the screwed up chess board puzzle and also to the idea that he made the riddle in full and then erased areas. But it's entirely plausible he lost or never had a solution.

Again, flat out mean one way or the other.

 

[Raging Epistaxis]

Ha! I've got it!

I fell asleep at my computer staring at the ascii version of the puzzle.
My head fell forward and hit the keyboard.

When I came to, I saw the face of [religious figure] in the box!

Now I just need to figure out what keys left their reverse imprint on my forehead.

Failing that, I suspect there may not be a solution. I'm no gamemaster by any means, but I can fathom no pattern.

R E

 

[Castellan]

I have a nagging feeling that there is an answer to this puzzle. However, I think that (a) the DM almost certainly did not "get" the concept of the puzzle well enough to be able to provide an accurate context, and (b) was not able to solve it himself. He may even have been thinking that someone in his group (and now ENWorld) could solve it for him.

Could it be a MENSA puzzle of some sort? Or something from a really bad video game?

I doubt the DM could ever give us the solution, because he doesn't know it, nor does he know how to solve it.

He may be a great guy, but if I played in a game with a campaign-ending puzzle like this, there'd be no end to the bitching from everyone involved. It wouldn't go well in our group.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I suspect that the DM does have an answer to the puzzle. But I also suspect he doesn't have a solution to it. What I mean is, somewhere there's a sheet of 8.5x11 that has a grid with symbols on it, which completes the board...that's the answer. But for there to be a solution, the answer has to follow from the given problem by some path of logic. Which is to say that the existing symbols must exclusively dictate the missing symbols and no other symbols. If they fail to dictate the symbols, or dictate some other set of symbols, or multiple sets of symbols (even if one set is correct), then the DM has no solution to the puzzle.

Unless he pulled this puzzle out of the "fun & games" section of a math journal, there's probably no solution.